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Was Rembrandt Stereoblind?
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     To the Editor: In an intriguing letter, Livingstone and Conway (Sept. 16 issue)1 propose that Rembrandt may have been stereoblind as a result of strabismus, as judged by the deviation of the pupils or the whites of the eyes in his self-portraits. We urge caution in making this diagnosis retrospectively from the artistic images, for several reasons. First, there are no "controls," such as might be derived from a survey of other artists with normal vision. Ocular deviation is suggested by the self-portraits of many artists; surely not all of them have had strabismus. Second, many artists take liberties with facial and ocular characteristics. El Greco and Modigliani are extreme examples. Michelangelo's David has markedly deviating eyes, which are not so evident from the ground but are clear on frontal view. Third, the amount of deviation that Livingstone and Conway measured in most of Rembrandt's portraits is in the range of 5 degrees — a small amount of strabismus according to clinical standards. Normal persons can in fact spread their eyes to this degree without losing stereopsis. Fourth, when looking at a mirror at a distance of 2 to 3 ft (0.6 to 1.0 m) — a guess of the distance at which an artist might place a mirror for a self-portrait — one's eyes span a visual angle of roughly 3 degrees. As an artist fixates on one eye to paint it and then shifts the gaze to the other eye, the shift in the angle of view causes a little more white of the eye to be seen on each nasal side.

    Finally, and perhaps most important, strabismus specialists do not follow eye position from the pupils or the whites of the eyes because these features can vary with the configuration of the head, the direction of the gaze, and normal variations between the optical and fixation axes of the eye. A better measure is the corneal light reflex. In a quick survey, we found 10 Rembrandt self-portraits with good corneal reflections. Of these (Table 1), two had ocular deviations (in opposite directions), and eight showed identical reflexes in the two eyes. The whites of the eyes in these paintings do vary in a way that suggests possible deviations, but we would argue that this is largely a result of artistic intent (and the factors mentioned above). The corneas tell us that Rembrandt probably had straight eyes.

    Table 1. Rembrandt's Self-Portraits with Corneal Reflections.

    Michael F. Marmor, M.D.

    Stanford University School of Medicine

    Stanford, CA 94305-5308

    Saad Shaikh, M.D.

    Central Florida Retinal Consultants

    Orlando, FL 32806

    References

    Livingstone MS, Conway BR. Was Rembrandt stereoblind? N Engl J Med 2004;351:1264-1265.

    Wright C. Rembrandt, self-portraits. New York: Viking Press, 1982.

    The authors reply: Of the 10 paintings cited by Marmor and Shaikh, 4 are not authentic Rembrandt self-portraits (the first, second, and eighth works listed in their Table 1 were not painted by Rembrandt, and the fifth is not a self-portrait).1 The remaining six were included in our comprehensive survey. A few Rembrandt self-portraits do show aligned eyes, but more often, Rembrandt depicted himself as significantly exotropic, by an average of 10 degrees and in some cases by up to 30 degrees. The 2 to 3 degrees of exotropia expected from looking in a mirror at each eye cannot account for this amount of deviation. The reversed asymmetry of the eyes in the etchings as compared with the paintings indicates that the strabismus was a feature of Rembrandt's physiognomy, not a stylistic trope: if he had wanted to depict one eye as looking outward for stylistic reasons, as suggested by Marmor and Shaikh, then it should be the same apparent eye in the prints and the paintings. Indeed, Rembrandt is known to have altered the hand positions in several oil self-portraits so that his (mirror) image would not appear to be left-handed.2

    Marmor and Shaikh suggest the study of other artists' work. We have been examining frontal photographs of famous artists in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. So far, a larger proportion of the artists (28 percent [15 of 53]) than of members of the general population (5 percent)3 show misaligned eyes by the light reflex test4 — a finding consistent with our hypothesis that stereoblindness is not a handicap to an artist and that it may even be an asset.

    Margaret S. Livingstone, Ph.D.

    Bevil R. Conway, Ph.D.

    Harvard Medical School

    Boston, MA 02115

    mlivingstone@hms.harvard.edu

    References

    Bruyn J, Haak B, Levie SH, van Thiel PJJ, van de Wetering E. Stichting Foundation Rembrandt Research Project: a corpus of Rembrandt paintings. Amsterdam: Kluwer Academic, 1982, 1986, 1990.

    White C, Buvelot C, eds. Rembrandt by himself. London: National Gallery Publications, 1999.

    Howard IP. Seeing in depth. Thornhill, Ont., Canada: Porteous, 2002.

    Hirschberg J. Uber die Messung des Schieldgrades und die Dosierung de Scheiloperation. Zentrabl Prakt Augenheild 1885;8:325-7.